A SURVIVOR of the Columbine massacre says she was reduced to tears when her fourth-grader son asked "will this happen to me?" in the wake of an elementary school shooting in Texas that left 19 kids his age dead.
Amy Over was just weeks away from graduation at Columbine High School in the April of 1999 when two fellow students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, burst onto campus wielding an arsenal of weapons.
Across a period of 49 horrifying minutes, Harris and Klebold would fatally gun down 12 students, one teacher, and injure more than 20 other people before taking their own lives in the school's library.
The Columbine High School massacre, as it would become known, was at that time the deadliest school shooting ever recorded in American history. However, the number of victims of that fateful day went far and beyond the 13 lives the two teen gunmen claimed.
Amy, and hundreds of other survivors like her, continue to shoulder the trauma they endured and are still haunted by the terrors they witnessed more than 23 years on.
In an interview with The US Sun, Amy, now 41, said each and every time a mass shooting occurs in the United States she is almost re-traumatized, bringing her back to the moment she scrambled for cover under a table in Columbine's cafeteria as gunshots thundered out around her.
For the mother-of-three, Tuesday's mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was certainly no exception.
Hitting even closer to home for Amy was the fact that many of the 19 children killed by teen gunman Salvador Ramos were the same age as her 10-year-old son, Mason.
"I was about to pick my son up from school when I heard about the shooting in Texas and I just started crying and breaking down," Amy said.
"It made me physically ill and brought me to my knees," she added. "You can't fathom that this could happen even once, but again it's happening in a school and it's young children being gunned down, like when is it going to stop?"
While Amy is open with her older children about what she experienced at Columbine, she said she has tried to shield her youngest from the details until he's older.
But Amy was reduced to tears on Wednesday morning as she apprehensively drove Mason to school in Parker, Colorado, and the young boy looked up at her and asked, "will this happen to me?"
"My son has never really voiced any opinions about shootings in the past, but he could really tell this one was affecting me," Amy said.
"I asked him if he needed anything or if he had any questions about what happened, and then he just stated: 'I don't know, is this going to happen to me?'
"And my heart just sank. I was trying to be stoic but I had tears in my eyes ... I didn't even know how to answer that."
REMEMBERING COLUMBINE
The morning of April 20, 1999, was a beautiful sunny day, Amy remembered, with the bright spring weather offering no forewarning of the dark cloud that would soon descend over Littleton, Colorado before the clock had even struck noon.
Then an 18-year-old senior, Amy was excited to wrap up the academic year and move on to college.
Having received confirmation that she'd landed a basketball scholarship to her chosen school the night before, Amy stopped by to see her coach, Dave Sanders, before class to share the good news and thank him.
"Little did I know that was the last time I was ever going to see him," Amy said. "But I got to thank him and just, you know, give him a hug and a high five before heading off to my classes."
Amy had been sitting in the cafeteria at 11.19am when she heard a succession of loud popping noises coming from just outside the front doors.
Unbeknownst to her at the time, Harris and Klebold, dressed in black trench coats and carrying large duffel bags, had both pulled out shotguns and started indiscriminately firing at students gathered near the school's library.
Sanders, who was also inside the cafeteria, called out for the students to take cover and stay away from the windows.
"So I ran to a table by one of the front entrance doors in the cafeteria with one of my peers," Amy said.
"And I just looked to my coach for the next instructions, because I trusted him, I knew him, and I knew the serious looks on his face meant that this was a life or death situation."
The room fell eerily quiet, Amy remembers. But the deafening silence was suddenly broken by a shout from Sanders telling everyone to run as Klebold and Harris burst inside.
Amy followed Sanders' instructions without hesitation. She put her head down and ran as fast as she could, passing by the bodies of victims as she clamored towards the exit.
Amy survived, but 12 of her fellow Columbine classmates would not be so fortunate.
Her beloved coach would also sadly be killed; Sanders was shot twice in the back and neck by Harris shortly after he managed to evacuate dozens of students and staff to safety.
NEVER THE SAME
In the wake of Columbine, Amy said she was forever changed.
The fearless, confident, and happy-go-lucky girl who had walked into school on the morning of April 20, 1999, would never return home.
She would also never play college basketball and for a time struggled with alcohol addiction for a few years after high school.
"My innocence was taken from me, along with my livelihood and my confidence ... and I just had this anger inside of me that I'd never had in the past, this rage that changed me so profoundly," Amy said.
"It just completely took my innocence away that someone would want me to die, and that they went to such lengths to hurt our community and our school ... it just made me so angry."
Prior to the depraved actions of Harris and Klebold, Amy said she never imagined for a second that a school shooting could or would ever happen - let alone happen again numerous other times elsewhere across the country.
But Columbine would unfortunately not be the last shooting of its kind, and instead, the massacre would serve as a sort of ignition point for the school shooting epidemic currently plaguing the US.
In the 23 years since, there have been more than 300 shootings during school hours, in which at least 185 children, teachers, and other people have lost their lives.
It's believed that more than 311,000 children have witnessed gun violence while at school since 1999, according to statistics released by The Washington Post, and there have been a staggering 27 school shootings recorded this year alone.
Tuesday's shooting in Uvalde is now the second-deadliest school shooting in American history, having claimed the lives of 21 people.
Ramos' senseless rampage is seconded only by the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012, in which 20 elementary school children were killed along with six of their teachers in Newton, Connecticut.
Sandy Hook, like the many mass shootings that came both before and after it, would become a political battleground over gun control and mental health reform.
But in the decade since gun laws in the United States have not changed much at all.
'ENOUGH IS ENOUGH'
Back in the car with her son, and Amy was lost for words.
Determined to put on a brave front, the 41-year-old fought back tears as she admitted to Mason that she "doesn't know" if he will ever witness a school shooting, but assured him: "I'm going to do everything in my damn power to make sure you're protected."
The fact she even had to have this conversation with her young son left her feeling disgusted, she said, as well as incredibly emotional.
The exchange also sent her mind down a rabbit hole of morbid what-ifs, but she tried as best as she could to not allow this dark corner of her imagination to run away with itself.
A number of years earlier, Amy had been dropping her eldest child off at school for the very first when she collapsed in the parking lot with pains in her chest.
Though she believed she was having a heart attack, doctors would tell her it was actually a panic attack. Amy was diagnosed with PTSD shortly after and has been learning to live with the psychiatric condition ever since.
Determined to spare her youngest son the emotional scars she bears, Amy is hoping for positive gun reform in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy - though she insists the buck should've stopped with Columbine.
"We can't do this anymore," she said. "We cannot bury any more children. This cannot be our new normal.
"I can't believe I brought children into the world and they have this as their reality.
"I didn't sign them up for this. I didn't sign him up for this and I'm so angry and sad.
"We've got to do something," she rallied. "Prayers and thoughts won't be enough this time."
CALLS FOR REFORM GROW
Students and teachers from all across the country walked out of their classrooms as part of an organized protest against the Uvalde shooting on Thursday, demanding action on guns.
More than 200 schools took part in the demonstration, which was organized by the Everytown for Gun Safety Group.
The student-founded group was launched in 2018 after the shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in which 14 students and three teachers were killed.
The protesters appear to have the support of President Joe Biden, who, during a somber address in the wake of Tuesday's shooting, also called for tighter gun control.
“We as a nation have to ask when in God’s name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby," Biden said during his speech. "When in God’s name do we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?"
For Amy, the time to act is now.
"For some reason, Columbine wasn't enough to bring around positive change," Amy said. "Sany Hook wasn't enough and Parkland wasn't enough.
"Will Uvalde and the 19 children who lost their lives be enough? I don't know ... When is enough going to be enough?
"No other country in the world is dealing with issues of gun violence like we are.
"We're supposed to be the land of the free but we should be embarrassed and ashamed that this is happening in our society.
"I'm just so angry and sad that another community is part of a club that nobody wants to be a part of: The mass trauma club."
UNEXPLAINED SPASM OF VIOLENCE
The motive for the shooting in Uvalde remains unclear.
The horrific ordeal began at 11.28am on Tuesday morning when a Ford pickup truck driven by 18-year-old Salvador Ramos slammed into a ditch a short distance from Robb Elementary School.
Ramos had just shot his grandmother inside her home and bragged about the attack in a message to a friend on social media. He had also chillingly warned, "going to shoot" up an elementary school.
Within minutes, Ramos was in the hallways of Robb Elementary and soon entered a fourth-grade classroom.
There, he killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in a still-unexplained spasm of violence, before being shot dead by police 90 minutes later when officers finally stormed the building.
Ramos, a high-school drop-out, has been described by officials as a loner who had very few friends.
He reportedly bought two AR-15s and a cache of ammo last week for his 18th birthday. One of those rifles was used in the shooting and the second was recovered from his car.
At a Friday news conference, Col. Steven McCraw of the Texas Department of Public Safety admitted in hindsight that it was a mistake not to enter the classroom where Ramos was located sooner.
McCraw also provided more information about how the shooter was able to gain access to the building, which should've been locked.
According to the officer, a teacher left the school to get her cell phone when she heard the nearby car crash and shots, but then as she re-entered, she propped the door open.
The gunman, who had been lurking nearby, then entered the school through the same door.
Officers recovered 142 spent rounds from inside the school, according to McCraw, along with 173 unused rounds.
Ramos has a total of 60 magazines with him, he said, including 31 magazines that were in a backpack that was left inside his car.
In the meantime, Amy said her thoughts are with the survivors and the families of the victims who will now be forever changed.
Speaking directly to those affected, Amy said: "This is a lifelong journey you’re about to embark on and unfortunately there's no way out of it.
"I'm 23 years out of my past trauma, and I have happy days again and I have light and love and I'm surrounded by a lot of great people.
"Just try to surround yourself with lots of love and don't be afraid to ask anyone for help."
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